Huckabee to Fox News: Mueller Tweet Was 'a Joke'

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee Friday morning said his tweet that special counsel Robert Mueller had called him was "a joke," that he'd posted on his Twitter account.

"You tweeted that Robert Mueller had called you," Fox News' "America's Newsroom" co-host Shannon Bream said at the end of an interview with Huckabee, a Fox correspondent. "Have you touched base? What can you tell?"

"People don't normally talk," Huckabee told Bream, according to a transcript from the program. "No, it's a joke."

"Oh, fine," Bream responded. "We just want to set the record straight here."

Thursday night, Huckabee said said in the tweet that Muller, a former FBI agent, had called him wanting to talk, but the governor said he did not know why.

"It will be leaked in NY Slimes or Wash Compost tomorrow." Huckabee also said in the tweet.

Huckabee frequently jokes around on his Twitter account, according to CNN, ridiculing a tweet in which he'd said CNN should be named the Cardiac Care News Network.

However, the comment Huckabee made about the tweet, coming at the end of his interview, was not included in a video of his conversation released by Fox.

Huckabee on Friday railed against anonymous sources, saying that the reliability mainstream news sources like The New York Times and "The Washington Compost, as I like to call them, is somewhat between an Ouija board and Tokyo Rose."

"That's how reliable these anonymous sources are," said Huckabee. "That's what we have to start questioning. Who are the sources? If you can't name them, maybe you shouldn't publish the story because you get embarrassed time after time, caught with your pants around your ankles. It turns out the stuff that you are breathlessly putting on the front page is absolutely untrue. Most of it has been."

If there is a source inside the government leaking news to the press, they have committed a felony and should "go to prison for a very long time," said Huckabee, but he doesn't really believe that's where the sources are coming from.

"I think a lot of the stuff they are pulling out of thin blue air," said Huckabee. "People are just going up and saying, 'is this true?' You can fill Jets Stadium with people who will be anonymous sources, but it doesn't mean that there is any veracity to their claims."

The art of journalism in America is lost, he continued, because there is "no checking of facts and getting it verified repeatedly by many, many sources that are willing to go on the record."

And as a result, Huckabee said he does not blame President Donald Trump for being angry.

"I want the entire country to be upset with this kind of shoddy reporting because it's frankly disruptive to the work of our republic," said the former governor.

Further, Huckabee said, with everyone talking about "Russia and fakeness, how do we know this doesn't come from Russian fakeness sources?"

"People who don't know, don't talk," said Huckabee. "People who talk don't know. That's a maxim in politics. When I see people who are telling me something that happens, I feel like if they are talking, they don't really know. If they don't really know, they are talking."

If people close to Trump are talking, then they don't belong in his circle of trust, but they're not talking, said Huckabee.

"These are people who are making this stuff up to make Donald Trump look bad, because I am convinced there is an attempt to overthrow, and I use that word purposely, overthrow this president," Huckabee said. "That is anarchy."